historical fiction, mystery
The Lions of Fifth Avenue is a fun historical fiction
mystery told from two time periods and points of view. The first viewpoint is Laura
Lyons who AMAZINGLY lived with her family in private quarters in the New York Public Library in 1913-1914. The second
viewpoint is of her granddaughter, Sadie, in 1993. The story includes
librarians, rare books, hidden passageways, and second chances.
As someone with a Masters in Library and Information
Science, I loved all the library stuff, both old and new. I wish I’d had a chance to visit the NYPL but
haven’t been able to scratch that off my bucket list yet. In any event, both
the old library facts and the new library/librarian descriptions interested me
and kept me going until the real mysteries kicked in later. I felt that the starring women were engaging
and I was curious to find out more about Laura’s life, both through her own
telling and through her granddaughter’s research.
The novel went in directions I hadn’t expected and I learned
a lot about the early feminism movement, the Heterodoxy Club of Greenwich
Village, NY, and the plight of women in the early 1900s trying to earn degrees
and being treated differently and judged by different standards than men, even
within the same department and by the same professor. I always love learning
more details about previously vague history because it helps me appreciate the
struggles of the time so much better. This is one of those novels that opened
my eyes to a fuller history.
There were definitely some poor choices by the characters and
heartbreak in this story, not to mention an unlikely “bad guy”, but I did enjoy
the tale very much! I liked the way the novel was crafted and told by Fiona Davis.
The narrators were Erin Bennett (Laura’s voice) and Lisa Flanagan (Sadie’s voice). They were both good voice actors but I didn’t care
for Flanagan’s “narrator voice” very much. Otherwise, I must say that I was so
engrossed in the story that I didn’t pay all that much attention to the
narrators. I think that means they did a good job! I’ll give them an A for this production.
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